


A Deeper Bruise of Knowing

by zuzeca



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Anxiety, Based on a Tumblr Post, Chronic Illness, Fear, Jealousy, Love Confessions, Matchmaking, Other, Pining, Unrequited Love, Vomiting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-16
Updated: 2013-12-16
Packaged: 2018-01-04 19:34:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1084900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zuzeca/pseuds/zuzeca
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On love and loss, on speaking and being silent, and on the opening of doors where before there were only blank walls.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Deeper Bruise of Knowing

**Author's Note:**

> I've been meaning to write a fic in this universe and for this particular pairing for a long time, but things just never quite played out. Then I caught wind of [this tumblr post](http://aleph-abyssal.tumblr.com/post/63078726822/cygate-can-we-please-discuss-how-powerglide-in), which was going around, indicating that Powerglide was originally going to be Cyclonus's main partner, and an idea began to form. This doesn't exactly stick with the request, but I like to give credit where credit is due. The title is borrowed from D.H. Lawrence's poem ["Anxiety"](http://www.online-literature.com/donne/3411/). Enjoy.
> 
> Betaed by [grimcognito](http://archiveofourown.org/users/grimcognito). Your encouragement has meant the world to me.

“Tailgate!” Swerve’s optics brightened at the sight of him. “I didn’t know the drill sergeants in the medbay were letting you out. Sit down, what can I get you?”

Tailgate sat gingerly. “Ratchet said, quote ‘none of those half-thought out concoctions which may or may not be explosive’.”

Swerve nodded sagely. “I’ve got just the thing.” He filled a shallow cup with energon and sprinkled it with something that glittered blue in the light of the bar. “On the house.”

Tailgate looked at the tiny vessel. “Thanks.” He sucked at it and let out a surprised sound. It went down his intake smooth and raised just the slightest hint of a charge. “It’s good.” Craning his head, he glanced around the bar. It was the middle of oncycle, so the room was relatively empty. “Have you seen Cyclonus around?”

“Not yet, but I’m sure he’ll be here come offshift. Mech’s become quite popular lately.”

“Really?” said Tailgate, trying to reconcile the word ‘popular’ with the scowling, abrupt Cyclonus that he knew. “They’ve stopped giving him a hard time then?”

“More than that, with the way he proved himself on Luna-1, lots of bots have been making eyes.” Swerve laughed, “Seems to scare him, the poor glitch.” Grabbing a bar rag, likely more for the appearance of being busy, as the counter beneath Tailgate’s glass gleamed, Swerve began to polish the surface. “A shame, a good hard frag would probably loosen him up.”

Tailgate clamped down on his field to prevent it from broadcasting his embarrassment. “Maybe.”

Swerve snapped his fingers. “I know, we’ll set him up!”

Tailgate nearly choked on his energon. “What?” But Swerve was already off, fingers twitching as he counted off potential paramours.

“No, he’s no good, _he’s_ a creep, he’s got that bizzare kink, though who knows, maybe he’d be into that—oh, I got it! Powerglide.”

“Powerglide?” Tailgate vaguely recalled red plating and wide wings. “Why Powerglide?”

“Easy,” said Swerve. “He’s a warrior, so they’ll have some stuff in common, and he’s a flier, so he’ll have a frametype advantage when it comes to the berth. And he’s got the ego to match Cyclonus. He’s perfect!” He gave a little snicker. “Plus he’s a,” he stuck out his fourth finger in a gesture that even Tailgate, as out of sync with the popular slang as he was, recognized, “you know.”

“A—a spike-mech?” Tailgate said. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“Well I dunno about _preference_ , but Cyclonus is definitely a valve-type. Fragging’s always a little more awesome when the parts fit together, you know?”

 _Oh._ If Tailgate was honest, he’d given far too much thought to the state of Cyclonus’s interface equipment, often while riding his own desperate digits in the privacy of their empty hab-suite, but he’d also been rather convinced, mostly by his imagination, that the grumpy bot was a spike-mech. Something unpleasant surged in his tanks; he hadn’t even considered that they might be incompatible. “I—I guess.” Struggling to push down the feeling of mortification, he said, “How do you even know something like that? You didn’t get Ratchet drunk and make him tell you or something, right?”

“Nope, medical disclosure protocols are ironclad in the face of Engex, more’s the pity. I got Blaster drunk instead. You’d be amazed how loose his morals get after a few.”

“Right,” Tailgate could feel Swerve’s concoction churning inside him, making real threats to come right out the way it came if his anxiety spiked any higher. “I think Ratchet’s comming me, I should probably go.”

Swerve shrugged in the absent way that indicated his processor was elsewhere. “Sure thing, buddy, see you around.”

Tailgate beat a hasty retreat, only pausing in a corridor once he was out of sight to lean against the wall and get his spiking systems under control. When he was certain he wasn’t about to purge all over the floor of the _Lost Light_ , he finished his journey towards the medbay, more tired than he ever recalled being.

Later that offcycle, as he lay on the sterile medical berth, unable to recharge, he reassured himself that Swerve was just overexcited. He wouldn’t really try to set Cyclonus up with Powerglide. And even if he did, it wasn’t as if Cyclonus would say _yes_. 

Would he?

 

Tailgate’s second foray out of the medbay came, ironically enough, at Ratchet’s behest, citing enough medical studies about the effects of physical exercise and strengthening newly rebuilt systems to make Tailgate’s processor spin. Again his excursion occurred in the middle of a shift cycle and so Cyclonus was on duty, ensconced somewhere in the upper decks. Reluctant to bother him, Tailgate found himself wandering the decks, until Skids found him and invited him back to Swerve’s. Unable to produce a suitable excuse, Tailgate agreed.

Swerve was, if possible, even more wound up and fairly bounced over to greet them, favoring Skids with the sort of smoldering look that indicated he was expecting some, and might or might not be willing to wait until his shift was over. Close as Tailgate stood, it was impossible to miss the pulse of interest in Skids’s field.

Swerve’s mouth spread in a wide, delighted grin and he turned his attention to Tailgate as he reached to prepare their drinks, “Told you it would work.”

“What would work?”

“Why my brilliant matchmaking plan, of course,” said Swerve, sliding two cubes across the counter towards them. “All it took was a couple of cubes and a little mental prodding for Powerglide. Well, maybe a bit of physical prodding too.” He poured himself a cube. “Operation: Get the Grumpy Ex-Decepticon Laid is a go.”

“He wasn’t a Decepticon,” Tailgate said on automatic, though his voice squeaked. “And why do you care so much?”

Swerve shrugged and tossed back his drink. “Just spreading the love, you know? It sucks slag when you’re not getting some on a regular basis.” He cocked his head slyly at Swerve. “Don’t you get antsy when it’s been a while?”

Tailgate wondered whether six million years following a couple of unsatisfying encounters with a fellow waste disposal unit constituted ‘a while’. “I suppose…but isn’t it a little extreme to go leaping into berth for a little built-up charge? And aren’t you going awfully out of your way?”

“Not at all,” said Swerve. “Turns out Powerglide was hot to trot. At least once he found out that Atomizer was banging plates with someone else. And he and Grapple wrapped up their little thing. Or was it Sureshot? And before that there was Pipes, but well, you know.”

Tailgate rather wanted to know how it was that Swerve could keep straight the interface partners of a mech he’d barely heard of when the more pertinent details of the rules Ultra Magnus laid out for the running of his bar tended to slip his processor, but did not question him. “Uh, are you sure Powerglide’s the best choice? Cyclonus doesn’t exactly strike me as the berth-leaping type.”

“It’ll be fine,” said Swerve. “Powerglide said they were all quite committed, at least until they weren’t. What I’m trying to say is all Powerglide needs is a good strong mech to bring him to heel.” He gave a little sigh. “Nothing hotter than a valve-mech that’ll top you in the berth.”

Tailgate hastily aborted the line of code which would have turned on his cooling fans at the thought of this. “Er, how do you know he’d do that?”

Swerve turned an incredulous look on him. “Angry, domineering, all that smoldering intensity? What else would he do?” 

A memory popped unbidden into Tailgate’s processor. Offcycle, seated close enough to Cyclonus that their fields meshed and he could feel the gentle warmth of idling jet engines, looking out into the endless ocean of stars, their voices rising in harmony and peace suffused his spark—

He cut off the thought and looked away. “Nothing, I guess. Never mind.” He started as though he just noticed the time. “I need to go.”

Swerve gave him a strange look. “This is the second time you’ve gone scampering out on me. You sure you’re feeling alright? Is Ratchet actually fixing you?”

“Yes, I’m fine. He’s a good doctor, the treatment just takes time. The Cybercrosis was really advanced.” And frag now he had to get out of here or he was going to get lost in thoughts of Cyclonus sitting beside him with that utterly helpless expression on his face and how scared he was to die, not that his life had ever really mattered that much but it would make Cyclonus sad and he didn’t want to ever do that and— “I have to go.”

“Sure thing, buddy,” said Swerve. “You’d tell me if something was wrong, right?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

The smart course of action, the right course of action, would be to wait for Cyclonus in their hab-suite, lay out all his chips on the table and find out once and for if he’d been imagining things. If the tentative little ways in which Cyclonus reached back at him meant anything at all.

_I think you’re pathetic._

He stared up at the ceiling of the medical bay and counted the clicks until oncycle.

 

“If you don’t stop pacing,” said Ratchet “I’m going to assume you have lingering corrosion in the wires in your legs and haul you up here for a strip-and-replace.”

“Sorry,” Tailgate forced himself to sit on a nearby berth. “Just antsy.”

Ratchet set down his tools and looked up from the replacement leg upon which he was working. “Tailgate, why are you here?”

“You said it would be another decacycle before the treatments were finished—”

“Don’t play dumb with me. You’re stable enough to be staying in your own berth and coming in for outpatient treatments. A rotation or two ago you couldn’t wait to be out of here. What changed?”

Tailgate studied his hands. “I don’t want to go back.”

Ratchet was silent for a long time. “Does this have anything to do with the rumors that have been flying out of Swerve’s bar like glitchmice from a burning slag-heap?”

Tailgate shrugged. “Maybe.”

Ratchet sighed. “Tailgate, you can’t operate based on rumors. At any given time there are thousands of rumors flying around this mobile hunk of wreckage. Rumors that Rodimus found religion or Ultra Magnus has taken up playing the Rigellan harp. You need to get the information straight from the source.”

“But what if,” Tailgate forced himself on, “but what if I don’t like the answer?”

“Then you don’t like it,” said Ratchet bluntly. A dark expression passed over his face. “We don’t always get what we want.”

Tailgate bowed his head in acknowledgement. “I’m afraid to ask…because I know what the answer will be.”

“How?” said Ratchet. “Are you psychic? Do you have some hardline to another bot’s processor you’ve failed to mention?”

“No, but why pick me over him? I’m not tall, or a warrior or a flyer. I can’t offer him money or prestige or—or…”

“A spike?” Ratchet said pointedly and snorted. “It’s a young bot’s conceit to think that the bits mean a slagging thing when it comes how well you can interface with someone. I’ve fragged a lot of bots, and I do mean a _lot_ , and let me tell you, compatibility doesn’t mean slag in the face of a real connection. Where your sparks reach right out and for just a moment you can feel them in your neural net. Forget merging, some of the best frags of my life were with bots I never met again. When everything just melts away and all that’s left are them, and you.”

“He’s never said anything about it,” said Tailgate quietly.

“He may not know how. Sometimes love isn’t sudden, it doesn’t waltz through the door and sweep you off to some exciting adventure. Sometimes it creeps up on you, so stealthy that you don’t even notice. Sometimes you’re growing closer and things are steady and in balance and one cycle they’ve just finished a joke or a story—”

“Or a song,” said Tailgate, half to himself. 

“—and you look over at them and all you can think is how beautiful their optics are or how much you want to touch them.” Ratchet jerked his head in the direction of the medbay door. “You may not get the answer that you want, but you’ll never know unless you ask.”

“Okay,” said Tailgate, and once more because he couldn’t think of any response to that. “Okay.”

 

Swerve’s was abuzz with activity, a hubbub of bots shouting drink orders and the whine of little serving drones as they flitted among the tables, interspersed by an occasional crash as what must have been quite an inebriated Whirl made multiple attempts to scoop a cube off the table, only to misjudge the distance and send it flying off the edge.

Tailgate ducked back into the shadow of a table near the door, practically the only advantage that came with being as short as he was, and scanned the room for Cyclonus.

There, near the far wall, surrounded by a gaggle of other bots, a cube in his hand and a slight smile on his face. Leaning over him was Powerglide, a possessive arm around his waist and a cocky tilt to his head. As Tailgate watched, Powerglide slid his hand up the edge of the plating that formed Cyclonus’s left wing, and murmured something in his audial. Cyclonus gave a little shiver, nearly imperceptible and his smirk widened.

Ratchet jerked in shock as Tailgate burst through the medbay and swore. “Blasted welder…what the slag happened?”

“Nothing,” said Tailgate as he headed for his berth. “Nothing. I was wrong.”

 

The deep of offcycle, when the ship’s lights were lowered and there was nothing to do but watch the stars through the nearest porthole and try in vain to recharge, was the worst. The thoughts crept in, eating at his processor like scraplets.

_Was I wrong?_

_Then why did he—?_

_But I thought…_

And the worst of all, cycling over and over through his processor, a perpetual mantra of despair and helplessness.

_Why not me?_

The cycle he’d looked out the porthole only to catch a glimpse of them streaking by, red and purple, wingtip to wingtip as they skimmed above the surface of the ship, was the first time he purged his tanks.

He couldn’t even self-service to induce recharge, every time he reached between his legs he’d think of those pitiful moments alone in the hab-suite imagining what it would feel like to touch Cyclonus—

_Pathetic._

Tailgate offlined his optics and shut out the stars.

 

Ratchet eyed the readout and gave Tailgate a suspicious look. “Your systems are showing signs of strain. How much energon did you consume last cycle?”

Tailgate shrugged. “About half a cube, probably.”

“I need more specific than ‘probably’. I left you with a whole cube, what happened to it?”

“I drank about half.” Tailgate ran his finger across the berth beneath him. “The other half ended up in the waste bin.”

“We didn’t exactly have time for a double-blind study of the Cybercrosis treatment,” said Ratchet. “So we can’t know all the ways you could respond to it.” His optics bored into Tailgate’s with that look that said he’d scented energon and wasn’t going to give up until he’d found the source. “Nausea _could_ be a symptom, but I find it very interesting that you’d only start displaying it now.”

“Well, like you said, brand new treatment.”

“Tailgate,” Ratchet paused and pinched his nasal ridge between his thumb and forefinger. “You can’t keep doing this. You’re going to undo all the work we’ve done. You need to go back to your hab-suite, sleep in your own berth. Living in the medbay is putting stresses all of its own on you.”

His tanks roiled and he clutched the edge of the berth, fighting down the surge of energon through sheer will. “Please don’t send me back.”

Ratchet sighed. “Then what am I supposed to do?”

“I could work as your assistant…”

“Out of the question. You need to go back, and you need to face him.”

“I can’t!” he wailed. “I can’t go back there and look him in the optic while knowing—” His tanks surged again and a bit of energon burned in his intake before he swallowed it back. His useless little intake, not even a proper tongue even if Cyclonus was interested; he clutched at his chassis and took several deep vents. “I can’t.”

A surprisingly gentle hand on the back of his helm, “Keep your fans running, try to stay calm.”

Tailgate buried his face in his hands. “I just can’t.”

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

“He’ll think I’m weird, a—a…”

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

“He doesn’t want me, I’m not good enough, I can’t…”

“What’s the worst that could happen?”

“I’ll lose him.”

“There we go,” Ratchet petted his helm. “Now I can’t say I’ve ever been able to untangle your, frankly rather bizarre, little relationship, but this is the mech that used his spark energy to save you. I don’t think you’re going to lose him.”

And there it was, Cyclonus had given such a critical and intimate piece of himself. Tailgate should be spending the rest of his days polishing Cyclonus’s foot plating in gratitude and he couldn’t stop the selfish little part of him that wanted something more. “But I won’t really have him either.”

“Is that important to you?”

The right answer, the proper answer was no of course not. Cyclonus’s friendship was a precious gift, something he’d had to earn, something he thought he’d never earn, and yet… “Disposal units…didn’t really get Conjunx Enduras. You could form an attachment with someone of your caste, but the love stories, the ones that got written down and splashed up on the holofeed channels, those were never yours. I was fine with that…doesn’t do to think too far above yourself, you know? I was fine with that, fine without attachment, but then he came along and he made me want…more.”

Ratchet’s hand paused on his helm.

“It was so exciting, traveling through space, having the adventures I’d always dreamed of but never had…I let things get away from me. I forgot what I am. I let myself dream too big. I let myself forget that just because someone makes your spark sing, because you want to lie down beside them and wake up again until the stars burn out, doesn’t mean that it’s anything more than a dream.”

“I think that you should tell him.”

“But Powerglide…”

“Forget Powerglide for the moment. I think you should tell him.”

“Why?” Tailgate jerked out from under Ratchet’s hand. “So he can apologize? So he can look at me with that fragging pitying expression? So he can know how pathetic I really am?”

“No, because he deserves to know.”

“He doesn’t need to know,” muttered Tailgate. “He has Powerglide now, with his wings and his weapons and his fragging spike…”

Ratchet gave a long-suffering sigh. “Do you really think that’s what this is about? For frag’s sake, I could whip up something in a couple of megacycles that would make whatever Powerglide’s packing under that panel of his look like nothing. No matter how big it is.”

Tailgate gave a mutinous shrug. “What does it matter? Why should I bother? He’s perfect and I’m...this.”

“It matters,” said Ratchet “because it matters to you. Do you not consider your feelings relevant at all? A few decacycles ago you were near death, now you’re letting yourself crash because you won’t stop fixating on it, but you won’t deal with it either. The choice is yours, but you either need to tell him, or let it go. You can’t continue like this, you’ll burn out.”

“But that’s the point, isn’t it? He’s given me so much, how can I ask for anything else?”

“By asking. You didn’t see this maligned love affair as one where you’d do nothing but take, did you?”

“Of course not!” Tailgate said indignantly.

“Then how is what you’re offering any more or less than what Powerglide has?”

“Because he’s…”

Ratchet shook his head. “Have you forgotten what an ignited hotspot looks like? The plating, the armor, those are all just trappings, when you strip us down, really strip us down, all our sparks look the same. The brightest spark on this ship is one of the quietest and most unassuming bots I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. And under here,” he tapped against Tailgate’s chassis “is a spark that was made to endure. Six million years, you could have snuffed out, bled out, but you didn’t. You held on, and you made yourself a life here. You befriended the most miserable misanthrope out of the lot of us, which is saying something. That takes a spark of infinite patience, of persistent optimism, and deep kindness. That’s nothing to scoff at.”

“He’s not a misanthrope,” said Tailgate quietly. “He gives off that aura, it’s easy to see that part of him, but I don’t think they always see him for who he really is.”

“And that,” said Ratchet simply, “is why you should tell him.”

 

The door to the hab-suite looked like a stranger’s.

He stood in the corridor for well over a breem, staring at the keypad. It was late, Cyclonus was probably in recharge.

Or with Powerglide.

A spark made to endure.

What’s the worst that could happen?

Shaking, he reached up and punched in the identification code.

The door slid aside.

Cyclonus was seated at the little desk, bent over a datapad. He glanced up and his optics widened.

“Tailgate!”

He was on his feet in a moment. Dazed, Tailgate let him usher him inside and to a seat. Cyclonus frowned at him.

“Are you alright? Ratchet mentioned you’d had some difficulty with the treatment and required space and rest. When Swerve spoke of seeing you I expected you back well over a decacycle ago.”

“You’re here,” said Tailgate.

Cyclonus raised an optical ridge. “Where else would I be?”

Caught, Tailgate dropped his gaze. “Somewhere…else.”

“Tailgate…” and there was that familiar warning tone.

“With someone…else.”

Cyclonus was silent for a long time. “Is this…” he said at last, as though he couldn’t quite believe it “is this about Powerglide?”

Tailgate’s vocalizer was frozen, but he managed a stiff motion of assent.

Slowly, Cyclonus knelt in front of him, bringing himself down to Tailgate’s level. “Powerglide is…a pleasant enough dalliance. But I have been here, each offcycle, without fail, waiting for you to return.”

It hurt, that bit of knowledge, but he’d expected that. “I’m alright,” said Tailgate. “You can go out on your…” he waved his hand in an attempt to avoid verbalizing it “you can go.”

Cyclonus reached out and caught his hand, very gently. “Why would I leave when you have just arrived?”

“Because,” Tailgate curled his hand in on itself. “Please don’t make me say it.”

Cyclonus’s free hand came up to cup the back of his helm. “I can understand if you do not wish to talk, but please understand how much I have worried—”

“I love you,” Tailgate blurted.

Cyclonus’s field, which up until now had remained quiescent, spiked with surprise. “What?”

“I love you,” he repeated miserably. “I love you because you make my spark sing, because you infuriate me, because I’ve never felt happier then we were just sitting together singing, or quiet, because you make me want to spend the rest of my miserable, pathetic little life with you, even if we never did anything more than move to the sticks and work on an energon farm. I love you…” his voice dropped to almost nothing, “I love you the way that Rewind used to talk about loving Chromedome.”

Cyclonus’s hand was a dead weight on his helm. “Is that what love is?” he said at last, an odd edge to his voice.

Tailgate shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never been in love.”

“Neither have I,” said Cyclonus. “I have lived a long time and felt the spark of desire many times, but it was always a fleeting thing. Powerful yes, overwhelming and exciting yes,” a dark look crossed his face and Tailgate recalled old stories told in halting words, “but always transient. I assumed it was not in me to make such an attachment. I assumed that my faith and honor were primary.”

Tailgate’s spark sank and he nodded. 

“I do not know love,” said Cyclonus slowly. “But here, with you, I think that I would like to know it.”

“Why?” said Tailgate. “I’m not…strong, or exciting. If anyone in the universe would bore you, it would be me.”

“No,” agreed Cyclonus, pressing his helm against Tailgate’s until he could feel the heat of his vents. “You are not particularly exciting…but there is something to be said for true patience, and kindness. For a love that does not burn itself out in the upper atmosphere in its rush to see itself fulfilled.”

“I love you so much,” whispered Tailgate.

“I know,” said Cyclonus, lightly touching the welding scar above his spark. “I know.”


End file.
